1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the distribution of information over a computer network. More specifically, the present invention relates to computer programs for selectively limiting the bulk distribution of messages over a computer network, and particularly over the Internet.
2. The Relevant Technology
The Internet is fast proving itself to be one of the most significant technological developments of the current era. Originally developed in the United States for military communications, the Internet has now expanded to link computer users world-wide. The Internet is an interconnected system of computer networks of varying types with terminals, usually computer stations, communicating with each other through a common communication protocol, e.g. TCP/IP. Through this interconnected system of computer networks, the Internet serves as the underlying hardware that facilitates a global system of communication known as the world wide web.
Piggy-backed onto the public telephone network, the Internet is available to anyone with a telephone line and a computer, though even these minimal requirements may become unnecessary in the near future. Both businesses and private users are taking advantage of the Internet in rapidly increasing numbers for communications of diverse nature.
One reason for the rapid integration of the Internet into society is that the Internet provides efficiencies in communication that are unmatched by other types of communications mediums. Messaging over the Internet is very quick, even to remote locations throughout the world. Responses are also typically very quick. Internet communication is minimally regulated and relatively inexpensive, typically requiring only the cost of a computer terminal and a periodic Internet service provider fee. Additionally, Internet communications are pervasive, providing easy access from every user on the Internet to millions of other users, almost regardless of physical location.
Because of these efficiencies, one form of communication that has quickly migrated to the Internet is advertising. Advertisers are able to generate and send bulk mailings at a fraction of the cost of mail, telephone, radio, and other commonly accepted types of advertising. Programs exist that quickly merge commercial advertisement messages with reference lists of Internet user addresses and automatically send out thousands of advertisements in a single day at almost no cost to the sender.
Unfortunately, the indiscriminate nature of broadcast advertising over the Internet has led to a host of problems. In order to deliver a message in volume and thereby take advantage of the efficiencies of the Internet, senders frequently use commercially generated reference lists of Internet user addresses. These reference lists are very labor intensive and costly to compile in any manner other than randomly. Thus, many Internet broadcasters use random lists of user addresses to send their advertising, transmitting messages to a large number of disinterested Internet users for every interested Internet user.
Internet users typically resent this random "junk mail" cluttering up their cyberspace mailboxes. Consequently, random advertising over the Internet is commonly referred to, rather unaffectionately, as "spamming." Angry recipients of unsolicited E-mail advertising have gone so far as to react in simultaneous, damaging, electronic backlashes aimed at particularly notorious junk mail-generating entities.
Regulations have been proposed to limit spamming, but as with every other form of regulation, regulations would limit the freedom of communications that exist on the Internet and would also likely increase the cost of using the Internet to everyone. As with other existing problems on the Internet, Internet users would prefer to regulate themselves.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method or apparatus that could be used by Internet users to maintain or increase the efficiency of advertising that exists on the Internet, while decreasing or eliminating the occurrence thereon of unsolicited mail.